Of course not.
Club ownership | Senior management team talk
- Thread starter golden_blunder
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It's not impossible. Our defense is pretty good, we just need a bare bones midfield and attack to start making teams fear us a bit more.
Right, so they done a review and decided ETH is their man, so they backed him in the window, remember we sold to buy… he wasn’t given a blank chequebook like every other manager under the Glazers.
So you are here championing for Ashworth, but you need to stop only saying things that suit your agenda, they tried to allow the head of footballing department Ashworth, he wanted Ten Hag to stay, so he was grossly negligent too right? So why would you trust in him for next manager when he wanted managers like Southgate? INEOS lost trust in him and sacked him. They told him now or never because they wanted a permanent manager now, I am not sure what is wrong with that?
You talk about the squad being ill fitted to the system of Amorim, do you think another manager would be getting us top 4 with the same squad? It seems that way, when in fact we all agree that the squad isn’t good enough, so which one is it? Is it the squad isn’t good enough for Manutd or not good enough for the system?
The way you have worded it, saying INEOS financial management has been gross mismanagement, when in fact its been much better than previous years. We made over 100m in sales and bought 180m worth of players, 20m of sacking and hiring managers. So lets see, over the last 5 years where we have hired and fired managers every 2 years, you think that was good money management, along with all the money spent on player wages and transfer fees? Seriously? the way we have gone about in the windows is 10x better than we had been doing so.
I am not a big supporter, I was against INEOS initially but I live in the reality and understand the club is in a dire state where harsh decisions have to be made. I am not going to write off a minority owner in 12 months, which you clearly are doing.
I disagree with you, you can call it shambles but that is again you using words to suit your agenda and stuck to one piece of Ten Hag and Ashworth. The first thing we all called for was a footballing structure, they have got rid of all the bankers and employed footballing specialists, whilst you may think that is the wrong way of going about it, I don’t.
They are investing into carrington, again to you that is a shambles but to me its not.
Have they made wrong decisions? Yes. Have they made good decisions? Yes as well.
The fact that you think an owner should get all footballing decisions 100% correct tells me you are not living in the reality because no one gets them 100% right.
Not that I enjoy people losing their jobs, but you are conflating things, the question is do we actually need those staff, yes or no? and if it is a no then what difference does it make what is done on the playing side?
Problem with all of this is that before INEOS came in we had the highest number of staff of any premier league club, people are assuming that cuts are being made purely to save a few pennies, INEOS are not going to get rid of staff they actually need in order to shave an odd million off the operating costs, they are able to do basic math, the most likely conclusion from these staff cuts are that we had too many staff and that the business had not been run efficiently for a long time (plenty of evidence to that), business has changed significantly over the last few years, far fewer staff are required to achieve similar outcomes, you may as well blame improvements in technology as INEOS.
If I had to put a bet on, I would say that INEOS conducted an initial review of the business, made appropriate cuts, then conducted a further review once changes had bedded in and are now making further cuts based on that review.
The cuts to meals, parties, concessions travel etc. for staff is just them saying actually this is ridiculous you do not get this in most businesses.
Its really horrible that people are losing their jobs with the club and I hope they quickly find work placements elsewhere but why do we, and other clubs, employ so many people?
It's a element of these unfortunate redundancies that has surprised me tbh.
It's a element of these unfortunate redundancies that has surprised me tbh.
I'm at the idea now of basically selling everyone aside from Dorgu, Martinez, Yoro, Mazraoui, De Ligt, Dalot (keep for a season), Fernandes, Amad, Garnacho, Mainoo and (at a push) Zirkzee. Completely shift 60-75% of the squad from the wage bill. Promote 3 or 4 of the younger lads in the summer. Spend money on say three key players (a keeper, a centre back and a forward) then explore the free agent market for one/two year deals whilst we get our house in order.
Shift expectations around Champions League qualification unless we can win Europa League. It's not happening through the league position.
Back Amorim but give him clear short/medium/long term objectives.
Off the pitch, focus on:
- Scouting
- Short term Redevelopment of OT to fix obvious issues (planning a new ground whilst we're in this current situation is an insane idea)
-Getting beneficial loan moves for the younger players not quite ready for the first team
- Fitness/injury issues and examine why players are getting injured so often in training
- Improving relationships with fans.
Shift expectations around Champions League qualification unless we can win Europa League. It's not happening through the league position.
Back Amorim but give him clear short/medium/long term objectives.
Off the pitch, focus on:
- Scouting
- Short term Redevelopment of OT to fix obvious issues (planning a new ground whilst we're in this current situation is an insane idea)
-Getting beneficial loan moves for the younger players not quite ready for the first team
- Fitness/injury issues and examine why players are getting injured so often in training
- Improving relationships with fans.
I wish everyone could understand this and unite against a common enemy. They haven’t gone away.
This is what many are failing to understand. Its not as simple as, give the players a 10% pay cut to pay for the staff or Mount's monthly wage covers the staff cuts.
It is so obvious that the club have conducted a review, if they wanted to save those pennies, they would have just sacked people without a review. They have taken months to have a look at this. They run businesses so they know how to run businesses efficiently, we can be critical in their footballing operations as they have not proven in that field.
They feel that the business can easily run without the number of people, I dont see what is wrong in that, makes us more sustainable for the future.
I don't care how bad it is. Cutting employee lunch is petty.
Saving 1m per year at the cost of morale and bad optics. Hell there would be caterings lining up to cater us for free just to get a poster of them posted on the gate
People paid influencers millions for some good PR, we're saving 1m for a bad PR and more disgruntled employee
Way to go INEOS
Hell get a trip to Saudi and that'll feed the staff for 10 years on participation fee alone.
There's a rich Indian family willing to pay up 10M for 2 hours of private Taylor Swift concert, might as well whore out our star players there to play football juggling. They made the club more than playing on match day
There's cost saving, then there's this, whatever you call this
In some departments it's essentially a fire-rehire scheme, a friend took the redundancy last time and was told once three month has passed they'll take him back on as a casual staff member, he now brings 25yrs experience at the club for the same wage as an average chef.
Based of the latest article Ashworth was sacked due to existing cuts to the football department. Not pretty.
Rapidly losing faith in the ownership. I think the long term future of the club is fecked to be honest.
At least I'm spending more time doing other things, can't be arsed to watch this dross anymore.
Rapidly losing faith in the ownership. I think the long term future of the club is fecked to be honest.
At least I'm spending more time doing other things, can't be arsed to watch this dross anymore.
In terms of the takeover: Absolutely Nothing.
After the takeover: Ferguson's position would be considered 'untenable' and he would be replaced in 2005/06.
The press would be briefed about his 'erratic behaviour' and 'Rock of Gibraltar' with new, serious management needed to fight Abramovich.
It'd work, too.
Who did the 'mentioning' or was it made up to crank up the pressure?
United are in deep shit. Yet we still talk about doing 75m deals or targeting players that will want close to 200k per week.
We all need to wake up and smell the (Aldi) coffee
Again, that's just objecting because its not nice. Its not an argument saying we can afford it, or even that its the best use of our limited money. Is is better to do that and have a smaller transfer or salary budget in the summer? That's the nub of it.
And as for that line about some rich Indian paying for stuff, jeez, talk about wishful thinking.
Exactly, United finances are in a bad state. Its more worrying that alot of the fans think this is down to INEOS and the fact that they paid off Ten Hag and Ashworth.
This has been brewing for the last few years, where our previous hierarchy decided to spend spend spend and deal with it later, max out the credit card.
Richard Arnold also mentioned this 2 years ago.. he wasn't sure where the money is coming from in the future, the club cannot continue to make 100m losses every season.
We cannot spend 75m on a player and give them 250k a week, its not going to happen.
INEOS don’t run Utd.
Their sport division, has controlling influence over the Manchester United football club management, that they put in place, under the terms of the groups purchase of a shareholding.
It’s the Utd executive and management team, under Berrada (all Man Utd employees, not INEOS employees) that run the show.
Jim Radcliffe doesn’t hold any executive or management function at the club.
He doesn’t even have a seat on the board of directors.
The board consists of the 6 members of the Glazer family, 2 independent directors, the CEO Omar Berrada, the Chief Financial Officer Roger Bell and two INEOS appointed directors, John Recce (Co-owner of INEOS Group) and Rob Nevin (Chairman of INEOS Sport).
Berrada’s team are trying to restructure and shake up the whole operation from top to bottom, not just the footballing operation, but the financial, commercial, organisational and operational structure.
This club needs to be put back onto a sound footing and pretty damned quick.
Instead of moaning and getting angry, fans should be welcoming this much needed shake up, because the future was looking very dark.
Much darker than just sitting in 15th place in the league.
.
Their sport division, has controlling influence over the Manchester United football club management, that they put in place, under the terms of the groups purchase of a shareholding.
It’s the Utd executive and management team, under Berrada (all Man Utd employees, not INEOS employees) that run the show.
Jim Radcliffe doesn’t hold any executive or management function at the club.
He doesn’t even have a seat on the board of directors.
The board consists of the 6 members of the Glazer family, 2 independent directors, the CEO Omar Berrada, the Chief Financial Officer Roger Bell and two INEOS appointed directors, John Recce (Co-owner of INEOS Group) and Rob Nevin (Chairman of INEOS Sport).
Berrada’s team are trying to restructure and shake up the whole operation from top to bottom, not just the footballing operation, but the financial, commercial, organisational and operational structure.
This club needs to be put back onto a sound footing and pretty damned quick.
Instead of moaning and getting angry, fans should be welcoming this much needed shake up, because the future was looking very dark.
Much darker than just sitting in 15th place in the league.
.
We have been in deep shit for years but it hasn't stopped the club spending like a drunken sailor in the transfer market. The club will continue to keep spending £150-£200m every transfer window, whilst the likes of Real Madrid tightened their belts and put a billion into a stadium to turn it into a money making machine, we spunked it up the wall on useless players. The mismanagement by our former CEOs has been staggering.
Of course there would be. A bloated, over-staffed under-efficient workforce is still just that, and an unnecessary cost to boot.
The human element to cuts sucks, nobody wants to see it but this is just another marker of the waste and incompetence of the Glazers. The club can’t go on the way it has been or we will have no club left. There is no such thing as too big to fail.
You raise a good point re Real Madrid. However, there are two differences.
Lucky for them, their redevelopment of the Bernabeu came mostly during the 2nd Covid season. It would have been very different if they had to pay to play elsewhere like (I'm guessing) Barca are doing at the moment.
Madrid also had a better squad to start with. They were able to win La Liga in 2020, finish 2nd in 2021 and then win the Champions League in 2022 whilst rebuilding.
We’ll see.
I can still remember it now. I bet we all can. When City pipped us to the league on goal difference in 2012. Oh how we all bemoaned our bloated admin staff. If only we got rid of a few hundred of them, we would’ve won yet another title.
Those famous terrace chants “we want kitchen staff out”, the hairs on the back of the neck still stand up.
Oh hang on, I don’t remember anybody saying the way to future success was staff cuts until INEOS told us it was. Silly me.
Those famous terrace chants “we want kitchen staff out”, the hairs on the back of the neck still stand up.
Oh hang on, I don’t remember anybody saying the way to future success was staff cuts until INEOS told us it was. Silly me.
No one was complaining about the bloated staff when we got our 10th Noodles sponsors from Timbaktu. In fact, the Glazers and the Woodward were getting praised for the commercial department even though the football department was pissing down all that sponsor money down the drain. However, suddenly all the financial experts on here have done a deep dive and realized that we are really bloated and need to trim down to pay for the sins of the football department.
No wonder so many grifters win election and Trump is in the most powerful chair in the world. We inhabit the world with too many simpletons who'd believe anything. They really really think that if someone has acquired wealth they have answers to all the problems in the world. Cue...Elon being in charge to bring about government efficiency and Jim trying to bring Manchester back to United.
As grim as it all sounds and looks - we need to be realistic in that whatever is being done is needed and for the greater good even if the optics aren’t great.
The new management team are not amateurs, those like Woodwood have left the building and the shite they left is finally being dealt with.
Fully expect that they will be doing a major overhaul in the playing staff too come the summer. They have to be less vocal on this as they need to protect what values they can but assume that if they are going through trimming the excess at the club then the playing staff will not be exempt.
Clearly the objective will be to raise as much cash and financial headroom for the summer to bring in the desired players at reasonable prices.
I’m sure noise and clickbait like Oshimen today will rumble on and hopefully distract from the real targets getting sorted.
I’m expecting a good overhaul this summer and a very strong emphasis on the academy as well to get some of those into the first team squad.
The new management team are not amateurs, those like Woodwood have left the building and the shite they left is finally being dealt with.
Fully expect that they will be doing a major overhaul in the playing staff too come the summer. They have to be less vocal on this as they need to protect what values they can but assume that if they are going through trimming the excess at the club then the playing staff will not be exempt.
Clearly the objective will be to raise as much cash and financial headroom for the summer to bring in the desired players at reasonable prices.
I’m sure noise and clickbait like Oshimen today will rumble on and hopefully distract from the real targets getting sorted.
I’m expecting a good overhaul this summer and a very strong emphasis on the academy as well to get some of those into the first team squad.
Madrid also benefit from being almost guaranteed Champions League football every season. Even when Madrid drop off a bit, there's unlikely to be four teams that finish higher than them in the league.
Well firstly, when you are winning, in 2012.. we were a successful football club.. winning brings sponsorship, which I think even you agree you dont need to be a financial expert to realise that.
So when the club is on a high, like most businesses, they attract more sponsors... you hire more staff because of growth. That is basic economics.
Since then, we have been on a downward spiral with us not winning the league, so sponsors then are not queueing up, why? because you are not the talk of the town anymore.
I dont think it takes a financial expert to realise = more success = more sponsors and vice versa.
So now, you are in a phase where sponsors are not queueing up because there is no success, but you still have the staff that you hired. I get your view, keep them because its the footballing reason we are not successful, why should non footballing element suffer from bad footballers?
This is a football club, so what happens on the pitch has a direct impact off it.
Since 2012... technology has moved on, alot of roles have become automated, so it is natural for redundancies in those areas.
Fast forward to now.. we are losing 100m a year, again, I am not a financial expert but 100m losses yearly is not sustainable.
Courtesy of Swiss Ramble and his latest article yesterday on United's financial position:
This pretty much sums it up. United the only PL side that over the last 10-15 years the owners have taken more out of the club than they've invested.
The Glazers have played an absolute blinder here - not only did they manage to buy United with money that the club borrowed and has to pay back, and then continue to pay themselves millions in dividends every year for 2 decades, they've now sold a portion of the club (again forcing United to pay for the consultancy fees) and managed to shift all blame and attention to the new part-owners.
The latter is part of the reason I strongly disagree with INEOS recent decisions in terms of ticket price rises and redundancies because they've fallen completely into that trap. The fans are now turning on Ratcliffe when the blame should still be directed at the Glazers. If enough of it continued to go in their directions there is maybe a slight chance they could be pushed into selling the rest of their stake to INEOS and there might be some hope. As it is they are probably content to sit back and let INEOS do all the work and take all the blame.
This pretty much sums it up. United the only PL side that over the last 10-15 years the owners have taken more out of the club than they've invested.
The Glazers have played an absolute blinder here - not only did they manage to buy United with money that the club borrowed and has to pay back, and then continue to pay themselves millions in dividends every year for 2 decades, they've now sold a portion of the club (again forcing United to pay for the consultancy fees) and managed to shift all blame and attention to the new part-owners.
The latter is part of the reason I strongly disagree with INEOS recent decisions in terms of ticket price rises and redundancies because they've fallen completely into that trap. The fans are now turning on Ratcliffe when the blame should still be directed at the Glazers. If enough of it continued to go in their directions there is maybe a slight chance they could be pushed into selling the rest of their stake to INEOS and there might be some hope. As it is they are probably content to sit back and let INEOS do all the work and take all the blame.
I think most people just don't want the neoliberal nonsense that has made their jobs harder and their lives worse over the past few decades to be infecting their football club. Football has historically provided an escape from the drudgeries of normal life. Most fans can empathise far more with the precarious low wage worker being asked to do more with less and having their employee perks cut back than the boss who is making these decision to safeguard the future profitability of their asset.
A lot of fans feel misled too. The spin around the Ineos takeover was that we would finally have football people making better football decisions, and owners obsessed with getting the 'best in class' for every aspect of the club. Instead, so far their football decisions have seemed similarly clueless and they appear most concerned with becoming the best in class at alienating fans with unpopular cuts and ticket rises.
It's also harder to support a club serving up shit on the pitch when you know they are also laying off their low paid staff, cutting support from former players, Munich survivor etc. The amount of fans who supported the Ratcliffe taking over instead of the sportswashing path to quick success shows that to a lot of people, Man Utd is about more than just performances on the pitch and trophies. Just as a lot of fans would not want to sell the club's 'soul' to Qatar / Saudi Arabia for trophies, many don't want to see the club cut back inch by inch for the same reason.
Uniteds finances are in a poor state because billionaire owners load the accounts with hundreds of millions of debt which require servicing and extract large dividends for personal gain.
INEOS seem to have been brought in to hammer the overhead while avoiding reputational damage to the glazers.
Billionaires don't give a toss about the average low earner. Billionaires are never satisfied.
INEOS seem to have been brought in to hammer the overhead while avoiding reputational damage to the glazers.
Billionaires don't give a toss about the average low earner. Billionaires are never satisfied.
Meanwhile players like Mount make millions doing nothing at the club while lower level staff are getting fired. I’ll remember that the next time we’re told to sympathize with injured players.
With respect that was 13 years ago now and the bubble hadn’t burst yet
Agreed, we should stop paying players when they are injured, as soon as players get injured, we should sack them. Give their wage to low level staff.
We should stop signing players either, incase they get injured and then we are wasting money on players being injured.
Its not like football players bring in commercial value or anything is it?
Yeah but the same applies more recently too. When we failed to qualify for the Champions League, nobody claimed that bloated staff was the problem. These staff cuts won’t get close to the funds needed to improve the team. That’s not what they are about.
The problem is spiralling interest costs. The only way to address that is to reduce the debt. Ratcliffe, or the Glazers for that matter, could do that in the same way many companies do when their business is in financial trouble, a directors loan. His puppets continue to ignore that.
Based on some of the incredibly Tory takes from the belt-tightening crew, maybe we should get Lampard in as the next manager.
Why you would agree with emiserating the staff and fans that prop up a community asset when you have a C-suite siphoning away millions of quid a year is beyond me - I suppose this is the same cadre of people who complain about their income tax being too high but never question why they're lining the pockets of privatised rail and water company chief execs because that'd challenge their ideology too much.
Why you would agree with emiserating the staff and fans that prop up a community asset when you have a C-suite siphoning away millions of quid a year is beyond me - I suppose this is the same cadre of people who complain about their income tax being too high but never question why they're lining the pockets of privatised rail and water company chief execs because that'd challenge their ideology too much.
It's better to sack the whole scouting department. They should bear most of the blame for the shite show. Leave the canteen open
With all the penny pinching there should be absolutely zero discussion of sacking the current manager...if the club can only afford a can of soup and an apple for the staff canteen, they sure as hell can't be wasting another 5-10M replacing the coaches.
End of discussion.
End of discussion.
You’re right in that the only way to solve this is to tackle the debt. Otherwise they are shuffling the deck chairs.
SJR as a minority owner is obviously not going to pay down such a huge debt on behalf of the Glazers. Who’s to say they don’t stay and load it up again? He needs to put pressure on them to pay it down. Otherwise stand aside and open for full sale
Logic says that but on the other hand they’ve gone through 7 or 8 managers in 5 years at NICE.
I wouldn’t rule anything out
Nonsense, if hypothetically he get's relegated of course they should discuss it.
Interest (usury) is bad for the financial system. United’s situation is a perfect example of this. How is it fair that after borrowing 600 million 19 years ago, the debt has gone up to 700 million? All those payments made have all gone to service interest.
The world and the banking system is evil.
The world and the banking system is evil.